‘Moby-Dick’ Reading Is Part of Man’s Crusade to Build Venice Oceanarium

It’s a whale of an effort, Tim Rudnick’s one-man campaign to create an oceanarium in Venice. No wonder he’s harpooned “Moby-Dick” to help out.

Rudnick will stage his eighth annual marathon reading of Herman Melville’s classic tale of the sea starting at 7 a.m. today and Sunday at Venice Beach. As usual, he will invite people to take turns reading the 135-chapter sea-hunt thriller until as late as 10 p.m., with the light of a kerosene lantern near the water off Windward Avenue.

The expected 30-hour recitation will be a salute to the 150th anniversary of Melville’s novel and the start of the semiannual migration of the California gray whale off the Los Angeles coast.

It will also be more. Rudnick hopes that the fictional Capt. Ahab and his great white whale nemesis will churn up interest in the sea museum and man-made tidal pools he envisions for the end of Venice Pier and the nearby beach.

The 58-year-old former contractor has dreamed for years of a marine museum that would show visitors that Venice is not just a carnival-like boardwalk filled with funky artists, chain-saw jugglers and rows of sunglasses stands.

“It’s more than just a place to roller-skate. It’s a serious marine environment. That beach is fundamental to what we are as human beings,” he said Friday.

Rudnick thinks his proposed oceanarium--with outdoor “touch tanks” of marine animals on the pier and the nearby tidal pools and native coastal gardens--can be built for about $500,000. He said supporters have pledged to help seek a city concession to use the pier and to solicit grants from private foundations to pay for the construction.

“I do think it’s definitely doable,” said Steve Vogel, education and collections curator for the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium in San Pedro, which is lending whale artifacts for display at the “Moby-Dick” beach reading.

Added Ed Tarvyd, a marine biology professor at Santa Monica College: “People love touch tanks and live stuff. And Tim’s a natural teacher.”

Participants in past readings said they plan to return this weekend. Seated on towels and beach chairs, several thousand listeners and readers came and went last year over the two days, Rudnick said.

“His love for the ocean has rubbed off on me,” said Hector Vazquez-Robles, a 29-year-old psychology student from UC Berkeley who will take part for the third year. “He’s taught me not to fear the ocean and its life forms.”

This year, Rudnick predicts a bigger turnout because “Moby-Dick” coincidentally has been back in the news lately. Its first-chapter references to the “Grand Contested Election for the Presidency of the United States” and the “Bloody Battle in Afghanistan” have been rediscovered in the current terrorism era.

Participants will be invited to join or support Rudnick’s Venice Oceanarium group. Membership costs $5.

Venice Home Is Filled With Ocean Artifacts

For a decade, Rudnick has collected sea life and ocean artifacts that he says could be a part of the oceanarium. For now, they are housed at his Venice home, where he has constructed an unusual room-size indoor terrarium to hold many of them.

The room’s floor is covered with ocean pebbles he collected from a Malibu beach. A huge saltwater aquarium in one corner holds an octopus, crabs, shrimp and fish. In the opposite corner--beneath a bookcase jammed with volumes on marine biology--is a worn leather chair where Rudnick spends his evenings. He doesn’t own a television.

Elsewhere in the room are microscopes, strands of lichens (“I like the smell of it,” he said.) and kelp, a football-size dried lobster, jars of preserved jellyfish and rare glass shrimp, and pieces of smooth driftwood.

A glass-topped table an arm’s length from Rudnick’s chair displays dried marine samples such as starfish, thornback rays and small shark jaws. He gingerly picked up a carefully preserved sheep crab and admired it.

“If we don’t do something, things like this will disappear from Venice,” he said. “Look at these little eyelashes. They use them to polish their eyes. They’re very delicate animals.”

Rudnick considers himself more artist than scientist. “I like the fact that [the] crab has eyelashes,” he said. “There is an aesthetic and a spiritualism to the sea.”

His home of 30 years, a remodeled shingled bungalow dating to 1913, has a rooftop deck outfitted with an antique, four-footed bathtub in which Rudnick bathes when he returns from his daily swims at the beach three blocks away.

Still, his wife, Robin, a Los Angeles school administrator, was stunned when he poured the smooth, rounded beach rocks onto the terrarium room’s maple floor. “She went down the street yelling when she saw it. She was beside herself. I think she’s gotten over it,” he said.

Rudnick said his interest in marine life came by accident 15 years ago. He had decided to give up his career as a home builder and was visiting a friend in Mendocino County. While there, he went swimming in the chilly ocean as a lark and found it surprisingly invigorating.

When he returned to Venice, he decided to continue the daily ocean dips. To make it easier, he went to a dive shop to purchase swim fins. Then he took up scuba diving, which opened his eyes to the underwater world.

Although he had a university art degree, Rudnick enrolled in marine biology and oceanography classes at local community colleges. Soon he was conducting beach field trips for schoolchildren.

These days, “I have a very rich life, though it’s not money-intense,” he said.

As Capt. Ahab might have said, chasing a dream can be as tough as chasing a whale.